


do not stand at my grave and weep

by scorpiod



Category: The Haunting of Hill House (TV 2018)
Genre: Codependency, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Gen, Ghosts, Post-Canon, Recovery, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 02:09:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17051075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiod/pseuds/scorpiod
Summary: I can't do this without you, he said.There is no without, she replied.And there wasn't.





	do not stand at my grave and weep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jeffgoldblumvevo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeffgoldblumvevo/gifts).



First night without her is spent in the hospital, needles hooked into him, keeping him alive. It's not the first time Luke ends up in the hospital and it won't be the last. 

His vision is a blur of siblings and doctors, fretting over him, all around him. He doesn't remember much—Shirley’s curtain of hair hanging over him, Steve’s whispered words, Theo’s careful touch, and Nell’s staring down at him from the ceiling, her face pale and wane, eyes a clouded over milky white. 

She stays there, throughout the night, never leaving Luke alone until morning.

He tries to reach out to her, but he can't move. 

*

When he's thirteen, he steals money from his aunt, reaching into her purse when she's asleep and pulling out her wallet, digging for a few meager twenties. For now, it's weed, to help him mellow out, get some rest; later, it'll be for stronger stuff, until he forgets what he even wanted it for, only that he wanted it. 

Nell catches him. Nell always does—at this age, she's aware of everything Luke does, they both are—their existence rubbing up against each other in a way that would chafe for anyone else, but they’re not like anyone else. 

When they're older, there’ll be a gulf, a distance. Different towns, different lives—Luke and Nell, spiraling down into the same kind of madness that consumed their father and killed their mother and always threatened to consume them both.

But here, they are always at each other's heels, sharing the same space and air, if not the same proclivities. 

She looks at him, eyes wide with childish shock and Luke smiles, as charming as he can, with the easy arrogance of a thirteen year old boy, and places his finger to his lips. 

“Don't tell.”

*

They don't leave each other alone after Luke comes home from the hospital, a loud silence echoing throughout the whole drive back—Steve decides to stick around for awhile, and Luke burned his rehab bridge yet again, looking for another place to stay

Though it feels more like, they don't leave _him_ alone, like if they turn their backs, he might steal another car and drive back to set himself on fire. He can't blame them for that; Luke's given them all a lifetime of reasons to be suspicious of him. It's part of recovery, the whole process, accepting that people may never trust you again. Fearless moral inventory and all that. 

It's fine. It's _fine_. 

Luke jumps back and forth between Steve and Theo and Shirley until he ends up in the couch of Shirley’s guest room with Theo hovering. That’s how she is—pretends she doesn't care, but cares all too much. 

“I'm not going back,” he reassures her and she rolls her eyes— _of course you're not_ —and reaches out for his hand, squeezing with a light touch— _I’m here_. He can still feel the warmth of her fingers, but the glove stays on.

She doesn't wanna see inside him. She's not ready yet and who can blame her for that?

Behind him, Nell reaches for him, placing a hand on his shoulder as he rests on the couch. She tastes like the bitter cold of withdrawal, sinking into his bones, catching at the back of his throat so he has to inhale a sudden sharp breath, but he doesn't try to push her away. 

Theo doesn't see that. 

*

“Don't tell—” Luke sputters out, nineteen and dizzy and everything is spinning, _don't tell don't tell, please Nell_. 

He can't handle Steve’s judgement right now. Can't handle the way Shirley looks at him, or Theo shaking her head. The pity and regret and disdain and judgement, choking on it. 

He can't handle standing up right now. 

“What did you take?” Nell asks and he holds up his arm, the track marks tracing up and down, littering his veins, the fresh one dark and bruised. With Nell, it's always fear first in her eyes. Sometimes anger. Sometimes, something else—warm and heavy like a blanket, covering him. 

The first time he did this, she slapped him and cried. 

_How could you do this to yourself?_ she asks, but she means, _how could you do this to us. To me?_

(Later, he'd experiment with other things, always searching for the right way to take the edge off. He'd try smoking it and oxy, tiny little pills that looked harmless, hot poisonous air in his veins that stopped the shakes, but he'd always go back to the needle, an old friend opening its arms for him. There's something obscenely comforting about the prick of the needle in his vein, the pain that came before the rush, choosing his own path to self destruction)

Nell shivers. 

She reaches to run her fingers over the marks on his arm and Luke makes a noise like a whine. It doesn't hurt, exactly, but he swears he can feel her touch in his sinew, right down to his marrow. It's a feedback loop, loud in his head, pulsing through him. He wants to close his eyes and lose himself to the dizzying cloying rush, but Nell’s hands stay on him, steadying and bringing him back, while Nell slips into his own high. Like together they could share the load and hasn't it always been like that? 

Two against one, two against three, two of them in a tea party together in a red red room and— 

“Do you feel it?” He asks suddenly— _it's a twin thing_ , he thinks. 

She nods. Her eyes are wet. “I thought you were done,” she says. “That it was the last time.”

Luke smiles at her, mouth stretching out in a semblance of a grin. “It's always the last time.”

 _Don't tell_ , and it's a cruel awful thing to make Nell his secret keeper, again and again and again. He's never shoved a needle in her arm, but sometimes he thinks he may as well have, dragged her down here with him. 

Nell should take him to the hospital this time. The next time, she will, and it'll be the start of a long career of hospital stays and disapproving siblings and rehab stints, intercut with highs that never last long enough.

But Nell grabs him and wraps her arms around him and she is no longer shocked, not with anything he does. She leans into his body, her face hiding in the crook of his neck. Her breathing shudders through him, and her body is so much warmer than his right now. 

“I got you,” she says. 

*

That night, Luke sleeps on the couch with Theo down the hall as Nell floats above him. 

He wants to pretend she's not there, shut his eyes, roll back. _One two three four_ , he counts in his head, but always stops before he gets to the end. 

She's cold when she wraps herself around him. He can feel her cold reaching down past his skin, to his bones—feel the emptiness of her touch, sharp as a burn, until he thinks he's as hollow as she is— 

Not hollow. Just dead.

That's what they do, right? Shoulder the load, share the burden. Nell can't be all dead if he's still here, carrying her around. 

( _Steve’s words ring in his head, from his lectures, from his book, echoing—a ghost is just a wish, we see what we want to see_ )

He clings to her, like when they were kids, holding on to each other, like if they’re together, nothing bad will happen to either of them.

( _Steve’s words in his head, about mental illness and runs in the family and cursed genes and maybe ghosts are real, but that doesn't mean they aren't crazy_ )

Nell doesn't say anything to him.

*

Nell never stopped seeing the bent neck lady.

She didn't talk about it much, not even to him—Nell put all that away after...after mom, slowly but surely, packing it up when she started to realize people weren't listening anymore. When people stop seeing them as sad, tragic kids, and started seeing them as annoying, whiny teenagers, and wanted them to get over it already. Grow up. Move on. Stop letting your past define you.

In some ways, they didn't need to talk about it—they know. They were there, when it all happened, even if the older they get the fuzzier things become. She didn't have to tell him whenever he saw her. He knew, same as she knows, distinctively, in the back of her skull, in the depths of her membrane, when he's high. 

Sometimes, he didn't even ask (maybe he should have—later, he'll think that's his fault, too). 

But he'd wake up and feel drowned in panic, for a second that stretched out into eternity. There had been many times where Luke has had many reason to feel panicked—his search for oblivion had taken him to sleeping with strangers and in drugged out musky hotel rooms and huddling for warmth in a tent he stole hoping no one would break in—but he knew immediately it this wasn't about that. 

(sometimes, he doesn't know what he's feeling, her or him, what belongs to only him, if anything)

“You okay?” he asked, calling her to check in, a habit that he was always bad following through on his own end. His voice shook, like he's the one who saw her— _bent neck lady_ , while his own ghost hovered at the corners of his eyes through bouts of horrible sobriety. 

Nell’s voice trembled over the line. “Yeah,” she said, not okay. 

He could almost see her, in his mind’s eye, sitting down on the floor, pressing her back against the edge of the bed, knees drawn in to her chest. Tears drying on her face. Her breath, loud on the phone, like she's right next to him. His chest throbbed. His stomach sunk. The fading adrenaline of panic hummed in his veins. 

“I miss you,” he said. 

(He used to think they'd know when one of them dies, how inescapable the feeling of losing your other half would feel—he didn't think he'd be so stupid to not even recognize the feeling)

*

It is perhaps a little harsh to say Steve is the latest in babysitters Luke has for today—like they're all still waiting for a third death, for Luke to run off and get himself killed. Luke, after all, has been the king of self destructive choices—but its Steve who is fixing them breakfast in Shirley's house, trying his hand at frying eggs, Steve who asked him to come over this morning. Doesn't matter how long he's been sober. 

( _It's always the last time, the last high—withdrawal is gone, but the cravings don't go away, and it's always worse when he has nothing to do_ )

Next to him, Nell mouths _don't_. 

_I wasn't going to_ , he feels like protesting, _I'm good now_ , arguing with his dead sister in his head. 

Steve is making coffee, Luke sitting on the island in his kitchen, listening to whatever pleasant small talk he and Shirley make. He has a notepad in his hand, drawing aimlessly, whatever comes to his head, keeping his mind on the straight and narrow. 

“That's mine,” Steve says, gesturing towards the pad—a writer’s tool, not an artist’s sketchbook—and Luke flashes a disarming smile. 

“Mine now,” he says. Steve throws a biscotti at his head. Shirley chokes a laugh. 

The cup of coffee is warm in his hand. It's been a couple of weeks since they buried Dad. Luke keeps expecting to see him too, but maybe he stayed in Hill House. Maybe he didn't leave anything behind for the rest of them to carry. 

Behind him, Nell puts a hand on his shoulder, and Luke is getting used to the feeling of deathly cold passing through him, shivering just a little.

Steve glances up at him from his own cup. “You okay?” he asks, and stops short, cutting himself off. 

Luke glances up. Steve is staring at Nell, looking through Luke, right behind him, zeroing in on the space where she hangs behind him—trying to hide the shock on his face and failing, eyes wide, turning pale. It's almost comical. 

Luke should be relieved— _it’s not just me, right? I'm not crazy? Thank god, Steve_ —but that feeling never comes, like his senses are dead to it. Instead his heart starts racing, pounding with adrenaline, with fear, threatening to choke his words. 

_Don't look at her_ , he tries desperately not to say, to let the words die in his throat. He doesn't look at Nell. He squeezes his own cup hard enough that his fingers bruise. 

_Don't take her from me._

Behind him, Nell whimpers—a low, croaky sound, like her vocal cords don't work right. It's the first noise he's heard her make since they left Hill House. 

Steve swallows hard. 

“I'm fine,” Luke says, laughing it off. “You look like you've seen a ghost, Steve.”

It's a horrible joke, but Shirley laughs, even as her eyes dance with confusion. 

Steve finally tears his gaze away from Nell and turns back to Luke, and and the relief does come then, flooding his senses, his body sinking into the chair.

“No,” Steve says, stuttering like he's forgotten to talk. “I'm fine.”

No one in this room is fine. 

“What's that?” Steve says, gesturing down to the writing pad Luke had commandeered. 

Luke looks down and notices for the first time, that he's drawn a rather crude sketch of a woman in a white nightgown, her body rendered in dark shading, and her neck grotesquely broken. 

*

Theo reaches out—calmly, gently, to stroke the hair back from his head, sans gloves—and like a lightning bolt, Theo knows she's there. 

“Jesus, Luke, _jesus_ ,” she pants, recoling, and looking like he just sucker punched her. 

He should have warned her. Her eyes dart wildly around the room, looking for Nell, before they zero in just above Luke’s head, hovering over them both in the couch. 

Luke’s own bent neck lady, keeping him company. 

“At least it's not drugs, though, right?” He smiles, half smiling, mouth crooked.

She punches him in the shoulder—gloves on this time, and okay, maybe he deserves that. 

“How long has she been here?” she asks, not looking at him, staring at their sister with her mouth parted open in shock. She brings her hand to her own throat, and Luke wonders if she can feel _that_ , too, the _snap_ of her neck, the violent tug of it, or if she's just a cold spot, spreading throughout their insides. “How long, oh god, _Nell_.”

Luke hesitates. He's not sure. She's always been here, even when he couldn't see her. At the graveyard. At rehab. “Since we left the house,” he answers. 

Theo draws a sharp breath. Nell stays silent.

He thinks he should feel— _something_ , here. Feel the same horror playing in his sister’s eyes. He should ask for an exorcism, to be cleansed, but he doesn't think he wants to be helped. 

“She feels _so cold_ ,” Theo says in a harsh, shuddering gasp, a sob fighting it's away out of her throat. She looks at him like he's dead too, a ghost haunting his own life. “How can you stand it?”

Luke doesn't know what to say. What can he tell her that she doesn't already know or will refuse to understand? Theo has her walls, solid with concrete foundations, built since they were kids. 

His walls have always been torn down, ripped apart, ever since he watched his mother poison his friend and had no idea what the words for what happened were, didn't know how to say it or process it. 

Nell’s hand slip into his, a cold comfort. _I'll never let you go again_ , he thinks to himself, squeezing her hand back. _Never ever ever ever_ — 

“It's a twin thing,” he answers. 

*

They all have dinner together—the four of them, sharing space together once again. It's five months sober and two months after dad and Nell and nearly dying in their old house. His siblings smile awkwardly at him. Theo can barely look at him. 

Luke has enough experience to know what an intervention is to know what it looks like, but he keeps calm, eating his French onion soup that Shirley made. 

There should be an empty chair for Nell, but there isn't. There should be an empty space for her, but instead she hangs back at the edges of the room, as if pushed away from the presence of family, but solid and clear enough so Luke can feel her like she's next to him. 

Steve is talking about trying to publish something not Hill House-related, something a little sillier that won't sell, but at least doesn't exploit their lives and Luke realizes no one is listening, no one cares, everyone's eyes flitting to the space where Nell hovers. 

Theo catches Luke’s eye and drags her fork across the plate so hard, it scratches, hurting Luke’s ears. 

“Can everyone else see her or am I—”

The room bursts into sudden flurry of conversation. 

“There's something there—”

“—you mean _someone_ —”

“She's not always here—”

“Nellie! Are you okay?”

“—you were different back at the house—”

“—she said she wasn't gone—”

“Stop!” Luke shouts, his fist hitting the table, surprising himself and everyone else with a loud _thump_ that throbs through his bones. 

The wine glass Theo was drinking from falls then, as if shoved, shattering when it hits the ground, glass and red wine everywhere. 

Theo screams. Shirley stands up very quickly, chair shoved back with a loud hard drag against the floor, backing herself into the wall. Steve is gasping like he can't breathe, and it takes Luke a moment to realize he's crying. 

“What the fuck, was that—”

“Just please,” Luke says, shaking. He squeezes his hand open and close. _One two three four five six seven_. “Please, stop, leave her alone.”

Nell flickers away, a shadow in the darkness, less clear than usual. Fading.

“She doesn't just belong to you,” Shirley says, gritting her teeth. Luke doesn't know what she means. 

The lights flicker above them. It makes darkness play across all their faces, hides Shirley half in shadow, her hair a dark curtain. 

“You...” he starts, finding the words, feeling thick headed and drunk and a little high, like all of those highs he's ever had are hitting him again, lost in the fog. “You see her too?”

They all look away, except for Steve who is staring right through Luke again, eyes peeled back, sweat on his brow. 

“Not always,” Shirley confesses. 

“Not like that,” Theo says, crossing her arms around herself.

Luke slumps in his chair, exhausted. He wants to sleep, for a very long time. A phantom hand reaches for his, squeezing softly. 

“She's not going to leave,” Steve says, surprising them all. He glances down at Luke from across the table and Luke swallows hard, his throat working painfully and a bitter cold in his chest. 

“She won't unless you want her to,” Steve says, softly—almost pitying—and it hits harder than a punch, worse than any accusation.

 

*

 _Come home, my love._

Luke wakes up with his mother's voice in his head, and his throat bone dry. He reaches up instinctively for it, waiting to find a noose around his neck. 

Nothing there. Even Theo isn't around—out with her girlfriend, getting some distance between her and him and Nell. This guest house becomes very crowded sometimes. 

He suddenly feels very alone, swallowed up. A choking sort of panic fills his insides, turning his guts cold. 

He slides out of bed—Theo’s bed, borrowing it since she wasn't using it (she'll be mad about this later—she'll lie down in and feel Luke and all his nightmares here, drowning her in his own sorrow) and pads down the kitchen. 

He wants a beer. He wants all his old standbys—the beer, the weed, the oxy, the smack. This house is too empty and too small all at once, and he has grown too big for it, clawing out of his skin. 

Hes digging through Theo’s kitchen, looking for something to drink, her wine stash, when he finds Nell’s cup of stars, hidden back in a cupboard. 

He draws in a breath, like needing to steel himself. He didn't even know Theo had kept it. It feels like something that should be long to him. Luke reaches out for the cup, tracing his fingers over the raised up stars. Nell smiles at him, in his head, the way she was when she was alive—bright and brilliant and so warm. 

For a frightening moment, he's back at Hill House, ready to burn the whole place down, drunk and angry and mad with grief— 

—and he's still at Hill House, with his sister cradling him, telling him he'll never be without her and all he wants is one more moment with her one more real moment— 

—and he's still at Hill House, small and fragile and watching his only friend foam at the mouth and Nellie is screaming and Dad is screaming and Mom's head hits the wall— 

_Come home my love._

When he turns back around, it's Nellie again, dead as ever, neck twisted at a painful angle, staring at him wide eyes. She doesn't startle him anymore. 

“Hey,” he says softly, reaching out to stroke a bit of hair behind her ears. She feels solid, cold but present. Her eyes are dark, devoid of light but there's something vivid in them. A hollow sort of desperation. An almost solid longing. 

“Don't go,” she says. It's the first word she's spoken to him and they come out strangled, like it's a struggle to even form them, push them out of her mouth. Luke gasps, his eyes burning as she sees right through him. 

“But I miss you,” he protests. 

It feels like a betrayal, to even say it like this. Like this ghost following him around isn't enough for him. He wants Nell, with her cup of stars and her wide smile and her infectious laugh and her button collection and her constant frantic phone calls and text messages and the unwavering faith she had in him that he never deserved, and all the things about her that made her his sister _Eleanor_. 

The ghost of her doesn't seem to realize his betrayal, the admission of guilt. She just shakes her head. “Don't go,” she repeats. 

Luke opens his mouth to say something, but he thinks about the Nell in Hill House still, always, there with the mom that tried to murder him too, twenty six years ago, and tried again last time, five months ago, and will always keep trying, begging him to come home with sweet voice and a soft touch.

He sobs instead, and sinks to his knees. Nell follows him down, scoops him up in her arms and tucks him close to her, hugging him tightly in a freezing hug. 

_I'm here. I'm right here. I'm still right here._


End file.
